Castles of the Dead
by psquare
Summary: "You know, Sam," Adam says, smiling, "I might kill Dean after all." ' Sam's powers reach disturbing new levels, and everything - and nothing - changes. Oneshot.


_**A/N:**_ Angst and weirdness. And _present-tense_. I know. It's horrible to dump all of this in one go, but… here it is. There's something about _Supernatural_ that keeps prodding the weird and morbid side to my imagination.

Set two weeks after 5.14: _My Bloody Valentine_.

**Warnings: **SPOILERS up till 5.14: _My Bloody Valentine_. Blood and gore, violence, swearing, whump, plentiful angst and weirdness.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own _Supernatural _or any of its characters.

* * *

_**Castles of the dead**_

"So much for that plan."

Dean idly fingers his beer bottle as he sits across the diner booth from his brother, who seems absorbed in studying the grease stains on the cheap formica tabletop. "I said," Dean says, a little louder, "so much for that _plan_."

Sam jerks at the volume, blinking up at him. "What plan?"

Dean raises an eyebrow. "The, uh, rakshasa hunt back in Minnesota? Too bad it didn't end up being a demented clown again, eh?" He takes another swig of beer. "That's kinda why I jumped at the hunt in the first place, you know."

"Rakshasas are masters at human deception – like demons, in their own right," Sam replies without the slightest shift in emotion. "People are hardly going to accept clowns wandering around suburban households in the middle of winter." And back his eyes go, to the table.

Dean scowls. He had expected a better response from his brother. "Dude, what's wrong with you?" He finishes the beer and leans forward, pushing away his half-eaten burger. "You've been looking like somebody flicked off your power switch for the past few days now, and it's getting friggin' annoying."

Sam raises his head slowly. "What did you say?"

"You're being annoying?" Dean shrugs. "Hey, not like that's new, or nothin', but –"

"Before that," Sam cuts in.

Dean stares at him. "Flicked off the power switch?"

Sam nods to himself at that, as if confirming something, then gets up. "Are you done?"

"Yeah, but listen –"

"I'm sorry, Dean," Sam smiles. "I'm not feeling very well, that's all."

Suddenly Dean feels cold. It's only been a couple of weeks since Famine (_craving and hunger and demon blood, and are you broken inside, Dean?_), and just about ten days since Sam came out of withdrawal and declared himself fit to travel. With Cas off on one his mysterious sojourns, Dean snagged the first hunt that came to their notice – bonus points for it turning out to be a rakshasa (_old fears now indulgences_) – but maybe he was too hasty. Maybe Sam's still not better (_maybe he'll never get better_).

He squints at his brother, at the faint tightening of the skin around his eyes, the creases on his forehead. "Are you –"

"Just a headache," Sam says quickly. "I'll be fine a couple of aspirin later." With that, he moves out of the booth and toward the door.

Dean quickly dumps the bill amount on the table and makes haste to follow his brother. If Sam says he's alright, he's gotta be alright. Dean can't handle another complication, another burden (_how do you get up in the morning?_), not _now_.

And so as he follows Sam back to the Impala, as he notices his brother's muted stagger, his vacant stare and the lines of strain around his mouth, he offers him some aspirin, and says nothing.

Sam opens his mouth as if he's going to refuse (_it's not the demon blood, it's me_) but quietly accepts the medication and swallows them dry. Soon he's settled himself against the passenger door, eyes partly closed, face drawn in some sort of chronic pain.

Dean drives on.

* * *

Sam's fairly sure something's wrong.

Wisps of black smoke are slowly winding their way around his legs and coalescing into a small orb that floats lazily in front of his face. He narrows his eyes, and it starts to shift into fantastical shapes, each distortion corresponding with a vicious spike in the intensity of his headache. Beginning to feel a little nauseous, he closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, Jessica's sitting on the bench seat between him and Dean.

So, yeah, Sam's at least about ninety-five percent sure that something's wrong.

He jerks upright in his seat, grimacing.

"Sam?" Dean's head is turned in his direction, although his face is obscured by Jessica's – "Sam, you okay?"

"You don't –" Jessica's sitting right _there_, smiling at him, and Dean's next to her, close enough to be able to smell the sweet perfume of her hair, the warmth of her skin that seems to overwhelm Sam, waging a war of attrition with the pain that persistently lances through his skull – "You don't – see...?"

Sam can hear the frown in Dean's voice. "See what?"

He feels cold. _Lucifer?_ "I... I'm not dreaming, am I?"

"No, Sam," Dean says slowly, carefully, "You're awake."

"He can't see me, Sam," Jessica says, her voice sonorous and so goddamned _real_ –

"Then I _am_ dreaming," Sam rasps, backing against the door as far as he can go. "You get out of my head; I'm never saying yes!" The headaches of the last couple of days, the vision-like flashes and the near-debilitating pain – it's all suddenly clear. "_Go_!"

"Sam!" Dean's parked the car, and is beginning to sound panicked. "Sam – Lucifer...?"

Jessica's hands close over his, just as warm and real as they were in that lonely motel room back in Oklahoma. "I'm not the devil," she says, the smile now melancholy. "Sam, I _am _Jessica."

Tears spring to his eyes, he's not sure because of the pain, or the confusion, or – "Jess...?"

"I've come back, Sam. For you." Her expression changes, becomes harder. "_Because _of you. Sam, you have to stop."

Her form shimmers and distorts as Dean's hands go through her and close over his shoulders, shaking him. "Sam!" he shouts as though from very far away, "Sam, snap out of it, dammit!"

Jessica doesn't move. "You have to stop this, Sam," she repeats, removing her hands from his. "Before more come, _happen_ –"

"SAM!"

Sam squeezes shut his eyes, and when he opens them again, she's gone, and he can only see Dean, eyes vivid with concern and anger and fear. He gapes at his brother. "She's gone," he says, and a familiar ache tugs at his heart.

A long moment of silence stretches between them before Dean speaks. "You're bleeding," he says numbly, looking at his face.

It's then that Sam feels the warmth on his upper lip. He reaches with one shaking hand and touches the blood leaking from his nostrils, and stares at the red smear on his fingertips, Dean's fearful face a terrifying counterpoint in the background. His stomach roils and turns, and suddenly he's pawing at the door handle. He nearly falls flat on his face as the passenger door opens, and the next moment he's on his knees, retching violently, tears streaming down his face from the strain.

Dean opens the driver's door and comes to his side, and says nothing.

* * *

"I'm not sure," Castiel says, studying Sam's sleeping form. "It doesn't seem likely that it's the lingering effects from the withdrawal, although, of course, it's not impossible. I'm hardly an authority on the subject."

Dean rubs his face, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Then what could it be? I mean, he _was_ hallucinating."

"You said that Lucifer's entered Sam's dreams before." Castiel looks at him significantly.

Dean looks up sharply. "So it _is_ Lucifer, then? Messing with Sam's head?"

Castiel shrugs. "Perhaps. If that is the case, then it could mean one of two things: either your brother's will is weakening, or Lucifer's getting stronger. Both do not augur well for the success of our mission."

Dean shifts his gaze to Sam, who's in the throes of a restless slumber. He isn't sure _what_ to think; he wasn't counting on Sam relapsing in the first place, and now it can mean that _Lucifer's_ that much closer to claiming his brother? Yeah, that's kind of not the help he was looking for (_we will always end up... here._)

... _No_. He's got to believe Sam's will is stronger than that.

"Can we do something?" Dean asks. "I mean, if at all?"

"I don't suppose there is much we _can_ do," Castiel replies, "except give him our unmitigated support."

Sam chooses that moment to wake up, jerking to a sitting position on the bed, blinking furiously. He doesn't look any better or any worse than he did when they got here, Dean notes, after Sam nearly collapsed into his own sick and Dean dragged him to the nearest motel. His face is covered in a fine sheen of sweat, his bangs matted and sticking to his forehead. He's pale and sick, but at least he's looking at them clearly, with recognition, and not with that haunted, unfocussed gaze –

"Oh, god." Sam's face crumples in pain again, and he turns away. Dean gets up and moves to the other side of Sam's bed, bending and trying to look at his brother's face. "Sam?"

Sam's got his eyes squeezed shut, and at Dean's voice he almost curls into himself, broad shoulders hunched, head bent, hands reaching into his hair, convulsively clutching handfuls of strands. Red fluid begins to seep from both nostrils again, and okay, now Dean's _really_ scared.

He reaches out and closes his hands over his brother's shoulders, and he can feel Sam shaking (_breaking_). "Hey hey hey, Sammy, come on, buddy –" Is this a medical problem? Can they all be wrong – did the demon blood permanently screw with Sam's physiology?

Sam lets go of his hair, and clutches at Dean's forearms instead, squeezing them in a white-knuckled grip. Dean winces at the pain, which is then blasted away by pure white panic as Sam throws his head back and begins keening in some sort of wild agony, blood coating his chin and making winding paths down his neck.

"Sam, Sam, Sammy –" Dean looks helplessly at Castiel, moving his hands to the sides of Sam's neck, trying desperately to provide some kind of comfort. He's never seen Sam quite in this much pain – "Cas!"

Suddenly Sam stops; his head snaps back to position and his eyes are open, and his eyes, oh god, his _eyes_ –

Then Castiel is at his side, placing two fingers on Sam's forehead. Sam slumps bonelessly back onto the bed, and Dean's left sitting there, cold and shaking. He now has a fairly good idea about what's happening to Sam: his eyes were pitch-black in that second he stared at Dean before Cas did his insta-sleep mojo.

_And the hits just keep on comin'_.

* * *

Jessica's shaking her head, and okay, Sam's feeling a little helpless now, as he's not sure what he's done wrong, and she won't _tell_ him.

"Jess," he calls, a little plaintively, from where he's lying on the bed. "Jess, what –?"

"You're not stopping, Sam," she says agitatedly, halting her pacing and turning to him.

"Stop what?" He gets to his feet, stops briefly until the world stops swaying beneath him. "You have to tell me _what_ –"

"Do you know what I am, Sam?" Jessica asks abruptly, and Sam frowns.

"I'm a spirit," she says. "A spirit that _you've_ called back from Hell."

The room is swaying again, and Sam's suddenly finding it hard to breathe. "What?" he whispers. "What?"

Jessica's expression softens; she walks to him, and takes his hands in hers. "You've called me back, baby," she says, her breath sweet and warm on his neck. "It's your blood; it's your connection to Hell – if you can send others to Hell, then I suppose it follows logic that you can call some back."

"I'm not –" He reflexively tightens his grip on Jessica's hands as another wave of dizziness strikes him. "I don't understand." Dean can't see her, he remembers. He's definitely dreaming (_definitely hallucinating_).

"I haven't come back yet," Jessica says. "Not entirely, anyway." She moves to his side, makes him sit down. "You're calling me back – it's a process, and when I'm completely here, it'll kill you." Her eyes, wide and blue and earnest, are looking into his, and Sam is struck by the sincerity. "And I'm not the only one, Sam. There are others – and as you call them, the effort will suck you dry. Or if you are not dead by then –"

"Wait, _wait_." Sam swallows. "I can... bring people back from Hell? Whole? Alive?" Could he have done this before, before Dean broke in Hell, before he got in too deep with Ruby, before the damn _Apocalypse_ –

"Sam, calm down." Jessica's warm touch is on his face again. "You can't bring people back to life – when I'm here, I won't be _me_. I'll be something _worse_ – worse than a demon, and if you aren't already dead, I _will_ kill you."

Sam dips his head into his hands, overwhelmed. "Then what can I do? Can I stop?" _Should I stop?_

"I don't know, baby." Her hands are running through his hair, broad gentle strokes that raise a slow-festering ache in his chest, a hole whistling with loss. "But you _must_. Because –" she removes her hands from his hair, "I'm not the only one."

Sam looks up, and Jessica's form flickers, blinking in and out of existence. "Jess?" He reaches out, suddenly overcome by a wild desire not to lose her again (_God knows I miss you... so much_).

"I'm sorry, Sam, I tried to warn you," she says, and this time, when Sam's hands touch her, they pass right through, and she disappears. The room's empty, so empty that Sam's in a veritable vacuum (_yeah, that seems just about right because he can't breathe, he just wants to __**breathe**__ –_)

A flicker at the corner of his eye catches his attention, a split-second rearrangement of molecules that resolve into a human figure. _Jessica?_ He forces himself to his feet, breath coming in harsh, quick pants. The figure quickly resolves into recognition, and it –

It isn't Jessica.

"Hello, brother," Adam says, a wide grin on his face. "Thanks for the invite – am I ever glad to get out of _there_."

Sam's had enough – his world cracks and splinters, and he feels himself fall back onto the bed, that festering ache billowing into a fearsome agony that burns through every nerve in his body. He opens his eyes, unaware of when or why he closed them, to find that he is lying on his side on the bed, a very blurred and very concerned Dean holding a blood-soaked cloth next to his face.

"Sam," he says. "Sam, can you see me?"

Sam blinks slowly. He can feel fresh blood gushing over already-dried smears on his upper lip, dripping onto the cloth. "I s'pose," he whispers.

"Okay, good, good." Dean smiles weakly. "You're going to be fine, yeah? You're gonna be okay." Dean's rambling: Sam figures he's got a pretty good reason to be worried. He wishes he can explain, he wishes he can apologise (_it's a disease I can't ever remove or scrub clean_), but right now he can't seem to do much more than blink at his brother and hope he understands.

"The bleeding's stopped," Dean says, looking to somebody at his side. He disappears briefly, and then comes back, bending until they're face-to-face. "Can you sit up?" he asks, and Sam's pretty sure he can't, but he's willing to try.

Dean hooks his shoulder under Sam's and snakes an arm across his back. Slowly but surely he helps Sam sit up, delivering a constant litany of reassurance as Sam groans against fresh pain. As he's settled against the headboard and the world slowly ceases to rotate around him, Dean wipes away the blood with a fresh wet cloth.

Castiel is standing at the foot of his bed, looking as grave as ever. "Do you know what's happening to you, Sam?" he asks.

Dean's holding a glass of water under his nose, and after taking a few careful sips, Sam tries to answer. "The blood," he says, the skin above his upper lip feeling raw and pinched. "My powers – I'm calling... from Hell –" He frowns at something that's shimmering behind Dean.

"Sam?" Dean encourages.

The shimmering resolves, and it's Adam standing behind his brother, grinning wildly. Sam tries to move, but his limbs are weighted down by a bone-deep exhaustion, and oh _god_, Adam's hands are moving toward Dean's neck, and neither Dean nor Castiel seem to _notice_ – "Dean, behind –!"

Dean turns, but it's too late: Adam's hands are wrapped around Dean's neck, squeezing –

Castiel is bemused; he thrusts his hands behind Dean, but meets nothing: Sam can see them go right through Adam, and panic flows through his veins like liquid iron, infuses strength out of nowhere.

Dean's face is taking on a blue tinge as he struggles against the invisible grip, hands uselessly flapping against his neck. Sam half-falls, half-staggers out of bed, and then he's got his hands around Adam's trying to pry them off his brother's neck. They are surprisingly corporeal, and Adam flinches and loosens his grip more out of surprise than on account of Sam's feeble attempts. Dean wrenches free, gasping, one hand hovering over his bruised throat. "S-Sam...?"

Adam turns to Sam. "I was thinking I could make this quick for you, seeing as you got me out of Hell, an' all. But –" He splays his hand over Sam's chest, and he feels like somebody's opened his ribcage and placed a block of ice there, that's melting into his veins. "—I guess this means a change in plans." He unbends his elbow, moves his arm forward; just a slight movement that normally can't have moved Sam's gigantic frame an inch, but this one is supernaturally boosted, and Sam's flying to the other end of the room. He hits the wall back-first, all the air knocked out of his lungs, seeing stars, collapsing to the floor in a tangle of limbs and clothes and hair. Plaster dust rains down on him.

"_Sammy_!" It's Dean's voice, loud and concerned and fierce, and it bounces around in his skull just like the rest of the world: his sense of orientation is completely gone and he can't really tell whether he's lying on the floor or the wall or the ceiling or a table –

Warmth suddenly encroaches upon the sensitive skin behind his ear, and the world abruptly lurches into place; Sam's stomach turns, and he can feel bitter, hot acid begin to rise up his oesophagus – _Dean dean dean go stay away from me run as fast as you can_

Dean's fingers move across his stylo-mastoid, and settle at the side of his neck. "Dammit, Sammy," he can hear, "breathe!"

– and that's when he realises that can't _breathe_; his chest is heaving, fiery agony burning through his chest, mouth wide open, gasping, gasping, gasping for _air that just won't come_ –

– and it's kinda funny how late he realises that, huh? Really, how _pathetic_ is he, if he needs his brother to remind him to _breathe_? Dean isn't his keeper, Dean needs to _run and run far far away far away from Sam and his evil far_

– and yeah, it's his supernatural bull-shit all over again, and Sam wants to stop this wrangling between life and death, good and evil, demon and human; stop being the useless ugly perversion that's stuck in the middle and belongs nowhere, yet _everywhere_: taking a bit of everything and blending it in a grotesque, out-of-control fusion –

"Sa – Cas!!" Suddenly he can hear a crash and Dean's gone; more crashes and grunts issue. The cacophony of sounds ends abruptly, like a seeping wound brutally cauterised, with a shrill scream from Dean.

And that's all that Sam needs.

Sam's gasping for breath, unable to see or move or speak, but his anger is stronger than his physical body and when it is fuelled by the litany of '_Dean, Dean, Dean_', it's stronger than the demon blood, it's stronger than all the forces of Hell combined.

The room suddenly thrums with power, pulling everybody down with a pressure that hints at some unimaginable, imminent explosion. Sam ferrets out the presence of Adam in a spectrum of perception he can only view with his mind's eye – Castiel, so bright, brighter than the sun; Dean, gently glowing like an ember in a spent fireplace; and Adam, a direct counterpoint to the other two: ice-cold and tainted – and _pulls_.

Adam resists, but Sam is relentless, and he pulls his step-brother into the only battlefield where they can fight on equal terms: Sam's mind.

* * *

A steady knocking at the door forces Dean to open his eyes and scramble to his feet off the dubiously-stained carpet. He looks to his side to see Castiel standing as well, staring over Dean's shoulder with a strange mixture of awe and fear.

"Cas –" Dean starts, but the knocking resumes, now accompanied by muffled shouting. Castiel's eyes shift to his. "We should probably get that," he says.

Dean turns, and Sam's huddled on the floor a feet to the side of the door. "Get rid of 'em," he says, and half-runs, half-slides to his knees by Sam's side. His brother's breathing again, _thank god_, deep and slow, inexplicably _sleeping_. There's no more bleeding, and Dean places the pads of his fingers against the side of Sam's neck, revelling and relieved in the feel of a strong, steady pulse.

"I can assure you that the sounds were not because of any erotic activity," he can hear Castiel saying, and Dean doesn't know whether to laugh or roll his eyes. He gets up, goes to Castiel's side and meets the rheumy gaze of the motel owner. He smiles, places a suggestive hand on Castiel's shoulder. "I'm sorry, is there a problem?"

The owner flicks narrowed eyes between the two of them before growling, "Keep it down. Customers are complainin'," and stalking away. Dean closes the door and turns to the angel. "Help me get him to bed," he says.

Castiel lifts up Sam's ginormous body easily and deposits, on Dean's insistence and with self-admitted bafflement, on the bed furthest from the door. Sam doesn't move, and if it isn't for the dried blood on the lower half of his face and the frightening pallor, Dean can swear Sam's just napping.

Dean slumps onto the edge of the mattress, raising a hand to his aching throat. He _saw_ – well, Dean's not sure _what_ he saw, but the feel of the invisible hands slowly but inexorably cutting off his oxygen supply... and then, Sam, _Sam_... and the force that even Castiel couldn't fight, that had them thrown around the room like they were nothing more than rag dolls –

– and, at the end, through and beyond the pressure that threw them to the floor and threatened to drill Dean's eyeballs out of his skull and leave them as twin gooey messes on the carpet, he saw –

"Adam." Castiel's voice snags Dean's attention, and he stares at the angel. "That _was_ your stepbrother," he says. "This is interesting."

"_Interesting_?" Dean exclaims incredulously. "It's friggin' impossible, that's what. We – _I_ salted and burned his body, it –"

"Dean. That would be the case normally, but this is hardly a normal situation." Castiel's eyes shift toward Sam's sleeping form, and there is a fear in them that the angel does not even try to hide. "What we encountered... is a perversion of the darkest kind; so rare that it has been centuries since I last saw such a thing..."

Dean's now unnerved. "What are you talking about?"

"Not a spirit, not human, not a demon. Sam's dragging your stepbrother out of Hell with the very power of his blood. It –" He shakes his head. "—is incredible. But I'm afraid it's also killing Sam."

Dean feels like his brains leaked out of his ears somewhere around 'dragging out of Hell' and 'killing Sam'. It doesn't make any _sense_: for one, can Sam's powers really go that far? (_can his brother have stopped this before it had even started; before Dean had broken the first Seal?_) And it has been a while since Sam had his last demon-blood fix; how and why did –

"We have to be able to do something about this," Dean says, getting up. "We have to be able to help him, somehow."

"Sam is waging his own war, I suspect, right now in his head," Castiel says. "It is up to him to find a way to stop whatever he's doing; up to him to find a way to control his powers."

The sad finality in Castiel's voice snaps something inside of Dean, a spark to a long-extinguished kindling. "I don't care," he says. "Sam's gonna make it out of this one, once we – _I_ do something about it." He begins pacing. "So. Dragging out of Hell. Why Adam?"

Castiel hesitates, and then speaks. "Adam, as such, was an exception to Heaven's plans. We did not expect a sudden direct mutation of the bloodline, and I guess you could say it brought in a new, unnecessary variable into the equation. He was not meant to exist, but happily for the angels, the problem solved itself. Or maybe through some divine intervention." He sighs. "I would think that your step-brother would have reason enough to harbour resentment fit to translate into murder."

Dean's jaw locks. _Adam_. The brother they never really got to know, the brother who had no reason to consider Sam and Dean as anything more than the sons of the man who directly or indirectly responsible for the gruesome deaths of he and his mother – "Okay. That would make this something like a… vengelful spirit summoning, right?" He grabs his duffel from under the bed, zipping it open and scrounging inside. "So we'll do an exorcism, speed the process in the opposite direction." He pulls out the familiar old battered book, and begins flipping the pages.

"Dean, I don't think this is going to –"

"Like I said: I don't care." Dean meets Castiel's gaze steadily, that numb little place in him aching with sudden emotion. "I'm not going to leave Sam to fight this alone." _Not again_.

A long moment of silence stretches between them before Castiel responds. "Then we will need to modify the Latin accordingly," he says, reaching for the book. "And a few other ritual materials."

Dean grins. "Absolutely."

_How do you get up in the morning?_

The answer's simple: Dean gets up _because_ it's morning.

* * *

"You know, Sam," Adam says, smiling, "I might kill Dean, after all."

Sam didn't quite expect the amount of effort it would take him to pull Adam here; he feels horribly drained, and can hardly lift himself off the bed. Adam, however, has not made any move so far to take advantage of his weakness; he merely sits on the other bed (_Dean's bed_) and gloats.

"I mean, you guys are really the talk of the town down there," Adam continues. "The situation with Michael and Lucifer, an' all? Man, what wouldn't I do to be in your place." He laughs, a harsh sound. "In slightly different circumstances, who knows? I might exactly be in your place."

"You can't mean that," Sam manages.

"Every word." Adam gets up, possessed of a sudden agitation. "If I were you, I'd say yes in a second! And I'm of the same bloodline, so my claim would even be legitimate." He grins wildly. "I lived my whole life in danger of things I didn't even _know_ about, leave alone understand… and I died like a pathetic, ignorant fool. _This_… this would be the chance to turn the tables. To take the power that's _mine_, by birth."

"You don't understand," Sam says. "Dad kept you in the dark because he wanted you to have a full, normal life. And if he – or Dean and I – had known what was to happen, we would've –"

"—fed me a load of bullshit," Adam finishes, flicking one hand in an impatient gesture. "It doesn't matter now, anyway; I'm outta there – and thanks again for that one, bro – and once I'm completely here, I'll kill both you and Dean. And since I'm the last of the bloodline," he concludes smugly, "Heaven and Hell pander to _me_."

Sam slowly lifts himself off the bed, leers at Adam. "You're a pile of ashes."

"You underestimate your own abilities, Sam."

"Maybe you're the one doing the underestimating," Sam spits, and throws himself at Adam, drawing his right hand back in a fist and delivering a powerful hook to Adam's jaw. Adam's head snaps to the left, and he falls to the floor, skidding a few feet before coming to a stop.

If Sam expected that to lay Adam low for a while, he was wrong: Sam's barely recovered from the inertia caused by the force of the blow before Adam pile-drives a fist into his abdomen, all the air leaving him with an almighty_whoosh_ as he stumbles back a few steps.

Adam is upon him then, delivering a barrage of punches and kicks. Sam defends and weaves through his attack as if on automaton, a lifetime of military-like training to thank as he counters Adam's unco-ordinated attacks easily. He sweep-kicks Adam's feet from under him and is on top of his step-brother, straddling his legs, his hands wrapped around his neck. "You aren't going to screw with me or my brother ever again," Sam snarls.

Adam grins, the wildness in his eyes in no way diminished by the strain. "You can't fight this, Sam," he says. "_Your very blood is calling out to Lucifer_ – in one way or the other, he _is_ going to occupy your body, whether it's you or I who says the word."

"I've spent a long time fighting this blood," Sam counters, "and I _will_ win." He tightens his grip, but Adam's still not showing any significant discomfort. "You know," he says, "when you first called your girlfriend? When she came to warn you out of some misplaced memory of affection – I killed her so that I could come. That's right," he continues at Sam's widened eyes. "She's gone forever, into the deepest, darkest bowels of Hell. In effect, I killed her – all over again!" Adam starts laughing, high and hysterical.

It's too much for Sam. He wants to – he _wants_ – to smash that face in, thrust a mental hand inside his chest, twist and _torture_ –

Adam takes advantage of Sam's distraction: he knocks away Sam's grip and pushes him off with a punch to the face. Sam stumbles to his feet and faces off against Adam once again.

This time, each of Adam's blows seem to have triple their previous power, and Sam realises that Adam was holding back, before. His skill just barely matches up to Adam's supernaturally-powered blows, but Sam can feel himself slowly weakening, every notch that his strength wanes adding to Adam's power. Sam's face is swollen, blood leaking from his nose and split lips and the dizziness is beginning to overpower him: he's barely on his feet, and _Adam's just getting stronger_. He stumbles back, hits the bed and slides down to the floor, his back against the bedpost, taking in air in laboured gasps.

Adam approaches him, his whole being replete with a joy too fierce for words. _So much for Redemption and Free Will_… is this how it's all going to end? Were they wrong in thinking they could fight against Heaven _and_ Hell? (_against Sam's evil?_) He closes his eyes, trying to look past the questions, to draw strength from some reserve he has looked over –

"What?" Sam opens his eyes: Adam's form is flickering in and out of existence, an expression of supreme bafflement on Adam's face as he repeats, "what?"

And Sam thinks: _Dean_.

"This," Sam says without thinking and throws himself at Adam again, wrapping his hands around his neck and squeezing with all his strength. There is no more savage triumph in Adam's eyes as he struggles against Sam's grip; only a numb surprise (_and Sam's not letting __**go**__, no, he won't, he won't, he –_)

That horrible pain flares to life again, and that's it, he's burning, _burning_, his skin peeling, his eyes cooking in their sockets, his very blood boiling in his veins –

– if he lets go, it'll stop, yeah, it'll _stop_: the pain, the fire; he's in Hell with Adam (_he's in Hell_) , but he can't see anymore so he can't really tell (_he can't tell anything, his tongue's ashes in his burned-out mouth_) only that if he lets go it'll stop (_but he's not letting go_).

The fire burns and burns and Sam screams from the agony of it all, but _HE WON'T_ –

"Sam! You have to come back –"

The pain reaches a crescendo, and Sam isn't Sam anymore, just the force that holds without reason or logic or consequence, but it's Dean calling, and Dean trumps Sam's force; Dean trumps Hell.

_You have to come back_.

Sam lets go.

* * *

"You know, I sort of wish he'd just stop disappearing like that. It's moved beyond just creeping me out."

"Ruby used to do that."

"… what?"

"Uh… when you were in, uhm, you know, dead. And after. Just, uh, disappear. I don't know."

"Oh, um. Okay." Silence. "You sure you're okay? I mean, you were out of it for three days after the exorcism; if you need more down-time…"

"Dean, I'm perfectly okay. I… I've got things under control." A cough. "So, uh, the exorcism. It was a pretty powerful one."

"Yeah, well, I think you did most of the work – glad to know the ritual helped, though."

"… You know, Dean, I've been thinking."

"Never a good thing."

"No, I was thinking about Adam. You said that Cas said he wasn't meant to exist – guess that means the angels did not have our lives planned out as well as they thought they had, right?"

"Maybe."

"Remember what Cupid said, back then: our – Mary and John couldn't stand each other before heavenly influence?"

"_Sam_. If you're really sitting here fretting over what that fat dick said –"

"But it _is_ true. Have you – have you ever thought that, if it wasn't for Da-John's blood, he would never have fallen for Mom? Maybe, left to his own devices, he would've fallen for somebody like Kate Milligan, would've had a son like Adam?"

"… yeah."

"Dean?"

"Yeah, Sam, but what's the point? Like you said, what's happened's happened. We take the hits and we continue fighting – we may be the products of some twisted cosmic soap opera, but we're also _us_. We make our decisions from here on."

"Team Free Will, huh."

"Hell yeah."

"A Free Will to choose what, Dean? There aren't any choices left."

"There's always a choice. There… there has to be. Right?"

Silence.

_**Finis**_


End file.
